Ukrainian Foreign Minister and OSCE head discuss expanding Special Monitoring Mission in the Donbas

Wednesday, January 18, 2017 5:09:00 PM

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin, and the Acting Chairman of the OSCE, the Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration, Sebastian Kurz, discussed the strengthening of the Special Monitoring Mission of the OSCE in the Donbas.

“We talked about the importance of strengthening the mission both in terms of its personnel and in a technical sense,” Klimkin stated at a joint press conference with Kurz in Kyiv. The Ukrainian Foreign Minister also noted that after the required level of security in the Donbas is attained, fair elections maybe held there.

“We will need to get ready for holding fair elections after the required level of security in the Donbas is reached. For this purpose, we will need the presence of the OSCE, an efficient armed component of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe,” Pavlo Klimkin said. According to him, the settlement of the situation in the Donbas requires the use of the OSCE’s full potential, including round-the-clock monitoring of the Ukrainian-Russian border section.

Klimkin also emphasized that the two ministers also discussed the possibility of deploying an armed OSCE SMM mission to the Donbas. In turn, Sebastian Kurz informed Klimkin about his intentions to improve the technical capacities of the OSCE SMM.